PUTRAJAYA should not mess with public health and impose a total lockdown across Malaysia with little exemptions given here and there, Umno appealed.
“The full closure of economic and social sector must happen except for food, agriculture and health sectors. It is to reduce stress on our health systems, which is critical at this time.
“Manufacturing and construction sectors are not more important than other vulnerable and risky sectors throughout the implementation of limited movement orders in total.
“All parties should sacrifice for the next two weeks. We will not be able to hit the curves of infection if various sectors continue to operate,” said its deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan in a Facebook post.
Three days ago, former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak criticised the Government for providing exemptions for many economic sectors during the total lockdown, particularly those in the electric and electrical (E&E) goods.
“Why can’t you have some guts just for 14 days? Too many factories given exemptions during the lockdown.
“The E&E factories, which employs about 600,000 workers, are allowed to operate. If you allow them to continue, other direct and indirect suppliers such as transportation providers and ports will also have to be allowed to operate on grounds to ‘preserve global economic supply chain’.
“But who is going to preserve national interest and the people’s economic interest who are calling for a total lockdown to flatten the COVID-19 curve, which is at a critical level now?” he queried then.
Workplace clusters need to be contained
The public also took to Twitter and vented out their frustration on the International Trade and Industries Ministry (Miti), with Najib’s rival Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad also calling it a “partial lockdown”.
Yesterday, Free Malaysia Today reported that Cabinet Ministers exchanged verbal tirade against each other over Miti’s decision to exempt over 95,000 business from lockdown closures.
Senior Minister (Security) Datuk Seri Ismail Yaakob tweeted a cryptic message saying, “I have closed the front door but…”.
Mohamad Hasan said that based on the data issued by the National Crisis Preparation and Action Centre (CPRCC), 115 workplace clusters, with 5,392 cases, were reported between May 12 until May 26.
From the figure, over half of the total involves the manufacturing sector, coming to 62 clusters.
“But on June 1, 2021, Miti announced as of 12 noon, 95,142 companies have obtained permission to operate during this lockdown period.
“This means nearly 20% of companies registered with the COVID-19 Intelligent Management System (CIMS) have obtained permission to operate,” the Rantau state assemblyman noted.
Adding that the number of exemptions may increase in days to come, the Umno leader said that even by allowing these sectors to operate under limited capacity could risk COVID-19 spread.
“And this goes directly against the goal of having a total lockdown. Please understand that we have been experimenting with various standard operating procedures (SOP) for over a year but cases are increasing with various ‘variants of concern’,” Mohamad Hasan remarked. – June 3, 2021
